Speaking at the inaugural WAVES (World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit) 2025, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen discussed how AI (artificial intelligence) is revolutionising India’s economy and will be crucial for its future development.

Narayen said, “Every disruptive technology—from the PC, web, mobile, to cloud computing, social and now artificial intelligence—has expanded the scope of human imagination and productivity. We believe that AI is accelerating and expanding the creative aperture even further across ideation, creation and production”.

He said India’s rapid digitalisation has positioned it as a global innovation leader in mobile, digital payments, and now artificial intelligence. Highlighting AI’s vast and extensive creative opportunities, he said, “It’s fair to say that India’s next growth as an economy will not be in software code”.

Narayen emphasised the benefit of generative AI for India’s creative community, saying, “It allows Indian artists, designers and storytellers to focus on developing culturally rich concepts and ideas faster.” He elaborated that this technology assists in overcoming the initial difficulty of starting new projects, which will bring a wave of content adapted for India’s unique culture and people.

Narayan also called attention to India’s potential across all four layers of the AI technology stack—data, models, agents, and applications. In fact, local large language models trained on Indian languages and datasets could offer a distinct competitive advantage. By training models on Indian cultural, linguistic and historical data, we have an opportunity to create new forms of digital models,” he said.”

He also noted that India’s strong customer support and sales skills can be used for autonomous agents and AI workflows, boosting its IT and outsourcing sectors.

“Our Firefly models have been designed to be ethical by design, with creator attribution and content credentials at their core”, he added.

Source: https://www.fortuneindia.com/business-news/move-over-it-services-ai-is-indias-new-trillion-dollar-bet-declares-adobe-ceo-shantanu-narayen/122650